


Two Stars, Set Adrift

by Spooberdem



Category: Avengers: Endgame - Fandom, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drinking to Cope, Grief/Mourning, M/M, endgame spoilers, my boys deserved more fic, so this happened, stayed up til 2 am writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 14:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18693706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spooberdem/pseuds/Spooberdem
Summary: 'He's so lost that after the funeral, when a teenager with blue eyes and light brown hair approaches him on the front deck and introduces himself as Harley Keener, Peter can't do anything but push past him, wandering in a world where Tony Stark is still alive.'





	Two Stars, Set Adrift

**Author's Note:**

> Endgame Spoilers ahead!
> 
> Hnnggghhhh SO, I jumped on the HarleyPeter ship after Endgame and I have no idea how to cope with my grief, so here we are. 
> 
> Any errors are my own, if you see them could you please point them out? That would be great.
> 
> Comments, kudos and creative criticism are welcome. Enjoy! (Or cry, idk which)
> 
>  
> 
> UPDATE: This fic now has a Russian translation posted on Ficbook, courtesy of Ao3 user lina so a big shoutout to them for that! Link [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/8243823)

The wreath sets off from the shore, a ring of flowers framing an Arc Reactor. Engraved into its metal surface is 'Proof That Tony Stark Has a Heart'. He doesn't quite get the reference. To him, it's another in a long list of questions that will never be answered.

Standing by the water, quiet tears track down Pepper's face. Morgan hugs her mother, not fully understanding what is happening. Everyone is silent as they send off a fallen comrade, a fallen friend, a fallen hero, a fallen father and a fallen husband.

 

Peter is completely numb. This is a dream, he's going to wake up and Tony is going to be beside him, a smirk on his face and a 'Hey, kid.' as a greeting, but no, this is reality, and Tony is dead but he's not, he can't be, and Peter can't feel anything but he wishes he could.

He's so lost that after the funeral, when a teenager with blue eyes and light brown hair approaches him on the front deck and introduces himself as Harley Keener, Peter can't do anything but push past him into the house, wandering in a world where Tony Stark is still alive.

 

*****

 

Harley Keener.

It doesn't hit Peter until that evening. _Harley Keener_ tried to talk to him, and Peter ignored him.

 _'There was this kid in Tennessee,'_ Tony told him once. _'He was real bright, liked to mess around with_ _tech and stuff. I think you two would get along.'_

 _'Were you guys close?'_ Peter had asked.

 _'He helped me save the world. I'd say so.'_ he replied. _'We keep in touch, I_ _try to see him as often as I can_ _. Maybe I should go for another visit soon, take you with me.'_

_'What was his name?'_

_'Harley. Harley Keener.'_

 

Harley was the first kid Peter knows of that Tony took under his wing. He was Tony's, what, son figure? Is that even a word? Harley came first, before Peter, he's known Tony for longer and is probably grieving more than him and he brushed him off like nothing.

Harley's staying in Pepper's house. He's a few doors down from Peter, at least until he has to go back to Queens in a week and a half. Should he go apologize, get to know him? No, it's getting late. He'll have to wait till tomorrow.

 

Pepper finds him in the kitchen after breakfast, the next morning. Her tears have disappeared, for now, but Peter can tell that the sadness behind her eyes won't, it never will. She presses something small and metal into Peter's hand. It's a disc.

'Go up to Harley's room and watch this,' Pepper tells him. 'He's waiting. Tony recorded this for you two before his mission, in case-' she shudders, takes a deep breath. 'In case he didn't make it.'

'Thanks,' Peter says, but his voice comes out as a whisper. He forces himself not to let the tears come, not _now_. Pepper nods, and as she walks out of the room he sees the stack of discs in her hand, each one a legacy left for a different person.

 

Peter tries for a smile as he enters the room, but the boy on the bed doesn't look any better than he does. Still, he does the best he can and introduces himself.

'Hey, I'm Peter,' he says, sitting down beside the other kid.

'Yeah, I know. Tony told me about you. You're the… Spider-boy?' There's no malice in his words. Peter can tell that he's looking for some sort of distraction, a way out of the emotion.

'Spider-Man,' he corrects him. 'Sorry about yesterday. On the porch.'

'Nah, it's okay. I get it.' Harley smiles, a little bit, and Peter can't help but notice how much the expression lights up his eyes despite the grief contained in them. He takes a deep breath. 'Let's get through this together, yeah?'

Peter pushes the disc into the small black box sitting on the desk. There's a click, and a whirr, and then a bluish, full size hologram of Tony Stark springs to life in front of the two boys. Tears jump into Peter's eyes at once, blurring his vision, but he forces the moisture back and focuses his attention on the holo.

'Hey, you guys,' His voice is so comforting, so _familiar_ , and Peter nearly wants to get up and hug the hologram before he remembers it's a projection. Tony's not actually there.

'Hope you haven't gotten into trouble yet. I wanted you to meet sooner, but if you're here, then,' Not-Tony gestures. 'Harley, Peter. Peter, Harley.' A strangled, hollow laugh escapes Peter's throat.

 

'If you're watching this, I'm dead.' Tony rolls his eyes. 'God, that sounds so cliché, doesn't it? Anyway, there's a bunch of legal stuff that I'm sure you'll have to go through, but this recording is naming you two as my heirs, along with Pepper and Morgan, obviously. Pepper will handle the company and whatnot, but basically you'll get a bunch of money and all the stuff you and your families will need to get through life. Harley…' Tony addresses the other boy and Peter zones out, because holy crap, he's Tony's heir but it hurts _so much_ , to hear his voice and see his face, even though none of it is real. He can see Harley start to cry at whatever Tony's saying to him, and he wants to comfort him but Peter doesn't know how.

 

'And Peter,' He falls back to the present. 'I want you to know that you were what kept me going. I was ready to give up in the last five years. I fell, so many times, but you picked me up again because I knew that there was a way to bring you back.' The tears are starting to fall, but Peter won't let them consume him, not yet.

'So c'mon, Spider-Man, if I can keep going without you, then you have to go on without me.' The hologram Tony stands up from his artificial seat. 'Harley, Peter, you two are going to go on to amazing things, I know it. You're gonna be heroes one day, and people are going to look up to you. 'Cause we're Starks, and that's what we do.' There's a hint of a trademark Tony smirk, then the blue light fades out of existence.

 

And Peter _breaks_.

 

Sobs wrack his body, and he pulls his face into his hands to shield himself from Harley's gaze, although he doesn't know why because the other boy is just as broken as he is, imploding into himself because this is it. Tony's really gone. The full force of his grief hits him like a train and none of his powers can stop it.

 

Somewhere below them, Morgan's screams echo through the house. She's finally figuring it out now, that the father she loved 3000 has left. Pepper is trying to comfort her, but Morgan's life will be different from now on, Peter knows it from experience, and even if she picks all the pieces back up there will always be one that's missing.

 

 _C'mon, Spider-Man_ , he thinks, but the flood only starts again.

 

*****

 

Peter gets drunk that night.

Tony kept a lot of alcohol in the house, and now Peter is taking full advantage of it. He wants to feel numb again, like he was on the day of the funeral, when he couldn't process the world and didn't have to deal with it.

 

The house is eerily quiet. Most of the other funeral guests headed back home, or in the case of the Avengers, whatever place they had to live somewhere else. It's just Pepper, Morgan, Happy, Peter and Harley here now.

 

The buzz in Peter's head feels amazing. It's like he's not in reality anymore, and he can just forget and do what he wants. Who cares what anyone else thinks? He's never been drunk before and he knows he's a lightweight, there's gonna be one fucker of a headache in the morning from all the shit he's consumed but he doesn't care, and it's great.

 

Harley finds him taking another beer out of the fridge.

'Dude, you don't need that,' the boy says, plucking the bottle out of Peter's hand. 'You've had enough.'

'Give it to me,' Peter whines, and he's never been a whiner but he needs just one more drink.

'No,' Harley says. 'You're drunk already. Are you even legal age?'

'I'm seventeen, and I don't care,' Peter grumbles. 'You're not twenty-one either.'

'Nope, but I've definitely gotten drunk more times than you have, and this-' Harley gestures at the empty glass and bottles on the counter, 'is way more than enough. I don't think you're even going to remember this in the morning.'

'Fuck you,' Peter mumbles under his breath, and he lunges for the bottle but Harley holds it up above his head. Dammit, the other boy's taller than him.

Harley sighs. 'Spider-boy, you really think Tony would want to see you drinking your ass off as soon as he's gone?'' A flare of anger rises up inside Peter, and he doesn't respond but he tries jumping instead, but the ground buckles and his feet fail, and then Peter's leaning against Harley and staring into his eyes and the strands of hair that've fallen into them and _W_ _hy is he so gorgeous-_

 

Harley pushes Peter off of him, grabbing his arm until he can stand again. As soon as he does Peter realizes exactly what he did, but the boy doesn't look like angry at him so that's good.

'My turn,' Harley pops the cap off the beer and takes a sip. Peter looks at Harley more closely, and he sees that none of the other boy's grief has faded. He came to the kitchen to forget too. Harley keeps drinking his beer, and through the haziness in Peter's vision that's starting to become a little uncomfortable he sees the tears start to trickle down his face.

 

 _Screw it_. Peter goes back up to Harley and wraps his arms around him. Harley puts the drink down to bury his face in Peter's shoulder, returning the hug. He feels the dam inside him break again, and the emotions flow back faster than Peter has any chance to stop them, but now neither of them are entirely alone.

 

Despite the boy's attempts to stop him earlier, Peter makes it through another bottle while Harley keeps drinking until he's as inebriated as Peter is. They fall asleep on the couch, moisture tracks drying on their faces, and if Pepper comes out in the middle of the night to find the two boys sleeping half on top of one another, and puts a blanket over them both, she says nothing about it.

 

*****

 

The next few days pass in a blur.

Pepper comes up with things for all of them to do, constantly, and it's a relief to Peter. It distracts all of them from the events of the last few days. Every day, him and Harley help Pepper sort through Tony's possessions, going through Stark Industries documents and in some cases, helping her determine whether or not something Tony made is explosive or not. There's a lot of paperwork to go through when it comes to the will, and it's boring as all hell but it's still something to keep Peter's mind off of things. Morgan runs around excitedly, doing her best to help even though she just gets in the way most of the time, but she's adorable and she warms up to the boys immediately.

 

One afternoon, Pepper lets Harley and Peter into Tony's lab. It's one of the happiest things that's happened to Peter since the last battle. Harley brings in some of the stuff from the garage Tony made him, and in return Peter shows him his new suit. The teen stares in amazement at Peter's web shooters, immediately asking him questions about how they work while he makes more of the sticky formula. They dig around the various cabinets in the lab, and eventually uncover a prototype of a metal repulsor glove, unfinished but of a different hand size and color than Tony's suits. There's an 'H.K.' engraved on the side. When Harley sees it he almost breaks down again.

 

They get drunk together once more. This time they don't drink until they can't feel, just enough to be happy as they can get. Peter finds out that Harley has a sister named Abbie, his dad abandoned his mother a long time ago, and that he met Tony when he broke into Harley's garage.

'I met Tony when he asked me to fight Captain America,' Peter says, leaning back against his side of the couch, dumping his feet in Harley's lap.

'He told me about that,' Harley has something between a smirk and a smile on his face, a lit cigarette dangling from his fingertips. 'Said you were an annoying pain in the ass.'

'Yeah, but listen, I took down _Ant-Man_ ,' Peter replies excitedly, because that battle was one of the most amazing times of his life. 'Okay, so Ant-Man did something and grew to, like, the size of a truck or a plane or something, and…' Peter retells the fight from his point of view, and Harley listens, both of them so involved in the story that they forget about reality, without too much alcohol this time.

 

On the fourth night after Tony's funeral, the nightmares begin.

Peter wakes up screaming, and he knows, he _hopes_ that it will never happen again but he can remember turning to dust. He felt so helpless, he was going and leaving Tony and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Then Tony's life was fading out in his arms until there was no one left, just a broken man in a suit of armor. The memories haunt him in his dreams, all too vividly.

 

On the sixth night, he stumbles down the hall to Harley's room, falling into his bed because he can't be alone or something worse is going to happen, and there is no one else he can turn to. The other boy says nothing but lets him stay, hugging him until the sobs die down and Peter can sleep peacefully.

After that night, he doesn't go back to his own room.

 

*****

 

Loud sobs jolt Peter from his slumber. Across the corridor, Morgan is crying. Peter knows that she's going through the same cycle of emotion that he is, but she doesn't know how to voice it apart from calling for Tony. Her cries break his heart.

'What do I do?' he whispers to Harley, who's staring into the dark with worried eyes.

'I don't know,' he whispers back. 'I'll go check on her.' Harley pulls himself from the bed and tiptoes to Morgan's room. Peter gets up after him, cracking open the door to where Pepper is sleeping and quickly closing it again when he realizes that he can't wake her up. She's spent too many nights staying up, trying to comfort Morgan. It's only fair that the two boys try to help her daughter.

 

When Peter walks into Morgan's room, Harley is sitting on her bed, holding her in his lap.

'I want to see Dad!' she sobs, clutching onto Harley's arm. 'Why won't he come back?'

'Shhhh,' He runs a hand over her dark hair. 'You'll see him again, one day. It's going to be all right.' Peter can feel something inside Harley break as the lie falls from his lips.

'I miss him,' Morgan says plaintively. She curls up against Harley, leaning her face against his chest.

'I miss him too,' he whispers, his voice cracked and full of pain. Peter sits down beside Harley, putting an arm around his shoulder, letting Morgan lie across them both.

The three of them sit in their sadness together until she falls asleep.

 

When they return to Harley's room, Peter leans in and kisses him for the first time, slow and steady. There's no fireworks in his stomach or anything like others describe; the emotion tampered down by the grief they both share but Harley returns the kiss, gently backing Peter into the wall. He tastes like salt and alcohol and cigarette smoke, the muscles in his arms flexing as he lifts Peter up, lets his legs dangle around Harley's waist. Peter runs his hands through Harley's hair and kisses him until no one, nothing else exists. They lose themselves in one another, speaking through touches and things that can't be said out loud until they fall back to bed, wrapped around each other so they will never let go.

 

*****

 

All too soon, their time together is over and Peter has to leave for New York, Harley for Tennessee. Even though Pepper and Happy have told her what's happening, Morgan can't figure out why her brothers are leaving. She runs between Peter and Harley, clinging to them as they wait outside for the cars to pick them up. Peter crouches down and gives her a hug.

'You're going to see me again, okay?' he says to her. 'We'll both be back, I promise.' Harley drops his bags and envelops both of them in a larger embrace, ruffling Morgan's hair.

'Don't worry,' he says. 'Morgan, we're gonna make you your own mech suit next time we're here. It's going to be awesome.'

'Can it have rainbows on it?' she asks.

'All the rainbows you want.'

'I love you 1000,' Morgan says, quietly enough that only the boys can hear.

 

Harley leaves first. Happy opens the black door for him to get in, and it's awful to say goodbye. There's more that Peter wants to say, but the words won't come out. Harley pulls him in for one last hug. Peter wipes a tear from the other teen's eyes. They can't be any closer than this, not here, not while Morgan and Happy are watching. Peter looks at the boy with Tony's garage, and the prototype gauntlet in his hand that he was never able to give to him, and whispers,

 

'If I can make it without you, then you can without me.'

 

He feels Harley grin against his cheek, just a flutter of a kiss on his ear, and then,

 

'C'mon, Spider-Man.'

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me if y'all like this, I don't write super emotional stuff very often and I wouldn't mind hearing your opinions on it.
> 
> Once again, comments, kudos and creative criticism are welcome. Thanks for reading!


End file.
